New South Wales

Ground-mounted PV is increasingly being investigated not only as a renewable generator, but as shelter for crops and creatures under fire from climate change. Last week’s All Energy conference handed the mike to some pioneers in the field.

SunDrive Solar, a Sydney-based startup working to replace the silver in solar cells with copper, has been allocated $11 million (USD 7 million) by ARENA to expand its metallised cell production to a commercial scale of more than 100 MW per annum. Few details or timeframes for the scaling have been provided, however.

Australian hydrogen technology company Star Scientific has inked an agreement to establish a joint research and manufacturing facility in the United States as it seeks to expand the market for its heat reaction technology that utilises renewable hydrogen to rapidly create heat for industrial applications.

New South Wales will be seeking 3,000 GWh of annual generation in the latest tender aimed at delivering new wind and solar generation and storage facilities as the state transforms its coal-reliant energy system.

Leaders from Australian hydrogen startup Hysata are joining Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his four-day visit to the US to meet President Joe Biden. Hysata is commercialising a hydrogen electrolysis breakthrough that claims to improve efficiency by 20%.

Australia’s largest electricity transmission project EnergyConnect has taken another step towards completion with the arrival of two 120 MVA capacity synchronous condensers that will sit at the heart of the Buronga substation in western New South Wales.

South Australia-based Sparc Hydrogen will use federal government funding to fast track the development of next generation photocatalytic technology to produce commercially viable green hydrogen from water using concentrated solar.

The solar-powered Stella Terra test car from The Netherlands’ Eindhoven University has just completed a 1,000 kilometre test drive from northern Morocco to the Sahara. In Australia, the solar car racing team from the University of New South Wales says the real challenge is to find new ways to push the boundaries of solar car races.

Falling ceramic particles less than half a millimetre in size have been used by Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO, to store energy in a concentrated solar thermal system. The team recently achieved a temperature of 803°C using the process at its pilot plant in NSW.

The Australian Energy Regulator has rejected a community group’s challenge to the Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector West, or VNI West, transmission project.